12/11/2003
Darrell Christian named AP director of sports data

NEW YORK -- Darrell Christian, business editor of The Associated Press, has been named to the new post of director of sports data, overseeing sports data services for newspaper and online use.

The appointment was announced Thursday by Kathleen Carroll, AP senior vice president and executive editor.

Christian will combine the resources of AP's newspaper sports agate service and AP Digital's MegaSports service into a single unit. In addition to sports data, he will oversee content for the entire MegaSports service, which provides text, scores, statistics and multimedia elements to Web sites.

He will report to AP Sports Editor Terry Taylor.

"Darrell knows sports and sports data and brings a wealth of terrific experience to this important new role," Carroll said.

Christian was named business editor in 2000, after serving for 1 1/2 years as director of MegaSports. He was AP's managing editor from 1992 to 1998 and was sports editor for seven years prior to that.

A native of Henderson, Ky., Christian attended the University of Kentucky. He began his newspaper career while still in high school at the Henderson Gleaner.

He worked for two summers at AP's Charleston, W. Va., bureau, served in the Navy from 1969 to 1972 and then joined AP in Indianapolis in 1972.

He became news editor there in 1975 and moved to the Washington bureau as a supervising editor in 1980. In 1981, he was named deputy sports editor in New York. He became sports editor four years later.

contact: Jack Stokes
212-621-1720